


Liberation

by BananaManiaBubblegum



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, Memory Loss, Snapshots, i have no idea what the procedure is when you wake up in a foreign country with no memory, snapshots tell a story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 16:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7114420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BananaManiaBubblegum/pseuds/BananaManiaBubblegum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Arthur Kirkland wakes up with no memories on a cold February morning in a body bag next to a dumpster in downtown Chicago. He lays in the snow and frost for hours, immobile and hungry, until a passer-by notices him and calls 911."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liberation

**Author's Note:**

> This is more of an exercise in writing in present tense, but it turned out okay, so here it is <3

5

There is smoke surrounding him as he sleeps. He feels it entering his lungs, filling him, choking him... Always softly, gently like a lover and yet as unforgivable as a murderer. The breaths he tries to take rattle his bones, sweat pours down his forehead, a cry rises from the back of his throat, he is dying, he can feel it, so close--!!

Arthur Kirkland lurches upright with a gasp. His sheets are twisted and damp, as are his night clothes. The darkness envelops the room, leveled only by the dispassionate blinking of the nightstand alarm announcing that it's 4:27 AM.

Arthur attempts to calm his breathing and runs a hand through his wet hair. The strands knot between his fingers and after a frustrated tug he lets the hand fall away. A nightmare, he tells himself firmly, it's just another nightmare. If only he could finally believe himself.

With a huff, Arthur gets up from the bed and pads to the kitchen, giving up going back to sleep. It's no use anyway, he can never fall back asleep after the nightmares, regardless of how heavy his eyes feel or how cotton-headed he winds up afterwards.

Some water is splashed on his face and the kettle is turned on. Only after a freshly brewed cup of tea is placed on the table does he take out his pack of cigarettes and light one. Breathe in. Breathe out. Let the nicotine soothe his muscles.

Flashes of the nightmare run through Arthur's mind and he tips his head back to gaze emptily at the ceiling, wondering when, if ever, it's going to stop.

6

The therapist gazes at Arthur dispassionately and he cynically thinks that he's been given that look enough times to last a couple human lifetimes.

Then he wonders where that thought came from.

Then he smiles easily for the therapist, and tells her he is okay.

11

The chill down his spine has Arthur stiffening and surreptitiously glancing around.

This time it's not the strange man from the cafe, but they have the same feel about them, the same cold air of detachment from daily life as the rest of them. He calmly finishes checking the cover of the book in his hands and walks out of the bookshop with no hurry in his step. Then he books it down the street and by the time his pursuers fight through the crowd at the checkout, he's long gone.

He doesn't go to therapy that day, or back to his apartment.

Too risky.

He takes the first train out of the city.

7

Sometimes Arthur gets flashes of what feels like memories but can't be. Those flashes are of wooden ships with sails, of old-fashioned suits, of sword battles and armours being put on him. Maybe he used to be a history professor, he thinks, before he lost his memories.

He doesn't want be a teacher. He doesn't even like people.

So what if he never returns to his old life? There's something comforting in that, the fact that he may never return his memory and become whatever he wants to be. Liberating.

He never tells the therapist that.

12

The train is supposed to take him far away from London, far away from the pursuers with the cold air about them, far away from it all.

It feels like he's leaving his heart behind nonetheless.

He doesn't know why, but tears are spilling down his cheeks and he can't stop them, stiff upper lip be damned.

1

Arthur Kirkland wakes up with no memories on a cold February morning in a body bag next to a dumpster in downtown Chicago. He lays in the snow and frost for hours, immobile and hungry, until a passer-by notices him and calls 911.

When asked on the way to the hospital if he knew who he was, where he was, or what happened to him, he answered "I am England."

Or so he was told when he woke up hooked to a heart monitor in a hospital room after being treated for hypothermia.

13

There's a familiar face in the crowd at the train station once he gets off, but he doesn't dare stare or linger too long.

They're gone like a whisper in the next moment, anyway.

His eyes are puffy and his body is stiff. He's tired from the journey, so he doesn't think twice about that face. Instead, he drags himself over the cheapest hotel in the town and books a room overnight.

He crashes like a log, after days of sleeplessness, stress, and paranoia.

He wakes up chained to a medical bed.

4

Is someone looking for him, he wonders one rainy day as he sits in the therapist's waiting room and gazes at the clouds covering the sky. Grey, just like his feelings.

He feels like something's missing from his life, but doesn't want to remember it at the same time. He's scared.

It's a wonder what the therapist is getting out of him, if he's keeping so many secrets from her.

It's a wonder he has so many secrets with a memory of barely a year.

2

In the entirety of the United States, there are 3 missing persons who look vaguely like him, none of whom are British, one of whom is found two days later on the other side of the country, dead.

No one is missing him, apparently.

His fingerprints do figure in the database, however. He is apparently one Arthur Kirkland, visiting the USA on business. Nothing else is stated in the file.

3

He's shipped back to England in a few months, after his ID and passport go through the process of renewal. He's dumped in some gaudy old house for the mentally ill since he 'has no return address', as one of the case workers puts it. Nasty bugger, that one.

But what can he do? He's got no siblings, no job, nothing but a referral to a therapist in England.

So he goes to therapy.

8

The bar is deserted at this time of day, but Arthur prefers it that way, prefers the morning shift before all the customers roll in and start making demands that hurt Arthur's brain and chip away at his patience. It's a terrible place that smells vaguely like lemon detergent and largely like piss, but it's the only one that would take someone with nothing on his CV but his name, appearance, and a therapy timeline.

At least it pays for the tiny London apartment he's living in now, and for food. The afternoon shifts at a cafe pay for the weekly trips to the therapist, although both he and she know it's not helping.

Neither mention it but it's there, shimmering under the surface and growing into frustration and anger.

10

This time the nightmare starts with the sound of children laughing and playing across a large green field. He runs with them, laughs with them, plays with them right until the moment the sky darkens and one upward glance later he is all alone on the field, dressed in a tight red uniform and clutching a bayonet for dear life as thunder reverberates across the skies and throughout him.

He's drenched and the weight of it all brings him down into the mud.

There's a shrill cry piercing his throat and it all swirls around him, icy blue eyes blink accusingly at him from the darkness, you weren't enough, you weren't strong enough, you weren't there enough, it's your fault, brother--

Arthur wakes up tangled in sheets on the floor, sucking in gulps of air like a drowning man.

9

The same person who's been to the cafe every day for the past week turns up again, this time with another person in tow.

They sit in the back and pretend they're not staring at Arthur, and he pretends he doesn't notice them, and they pretend they don't know he's noticed them.

Arthur leaves work half an hour early to blend in with the crowd leaving the cafe, then calls in sick the next day. And the day after.

After that, he sends in his resignation and finds another job.

He would've felt better leaving the city entirely, but he doesn't have the money for that.

17

The nightmares never stop.

14

Pitiful eyes are watching him through the tall glass windows of the laboratory, like he's an animal in a zoo. He hates it, hates them, thrashes about, bites the white coats trying to sedate him.

No one is trying to explain, they just come and go and try different things and watch for his reaction as if it would be anything but red hot anger, or fear, or tiredness.

One day they stare at him and he blinks at them and he looks away, languidly and disinterestedly.

15

Time passes but Arthur isn't aware of it. His only companions are the glaring overhead lights of the laboratory.

One day, he has a plan.

One day, he uses the fact the doctors have relaxed around him.

One day, he steals a key from somebody's pocket, gets himself out of the restraints, and stabs himself in the heart with a scalpel.

He wouldn't have escaped, anyway. Nowhere to run, besides.

Curious, though.

He doesn't feel like he's dying.

Just falling asleep.

16

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland wakes up surrounded by British scientists and Nations watching anxiously beyond tall glass windows of a laboratory.

He snaps at them that he is fine and for Christ's sake, someone get him some clean clothes.

A year is missing from his lifetime, but what is a year to a Nation? A small voice in the back of his head whispers questions in fear, so many questions of a confused personality, but what is one voice to a Nation, the personification of many?

The nightmares never stop, but what are nightmares to a-- well. They're hell.

**Author's Note:**

> I do not, in fact, know what the US processing of British memory loss patients with no documents is, especially not of one whose file is 99% above the clearance of the hospital personnel, lmao.


End file.
